Linux Keyring

Store and Retrieve Secrets from the Linux Keyring

Overview

Keyring is a Linux security feature that stores sensitive information, such as passwords and secrets, and allows applications to securely access it.

Keeper provides a utility, the Linux Keyring Utility, that interacts with the native Linux APIs to store and retrieve secrets from the Keyring using the Secret Service API. This utility can be used by any integration, plugin, or code base to store and retrieve credentials, secrets, and passwords in any Linux Keyring simply and natively.

The code base for the Linux Keyring Utility can be found here:

GitHub - Keeper-Security/linux-keyring-utility: A utility for natively interacting with the Linux KeyringGitHub

The binary needed to use the above utility can be found here:

Releases · Keeper-Security/linux-keyring-utilityGitHub

To use the Linux Keyring Utility, you can either

• deploy the pre-built binary from the releases page
• or import it into your code base.

Both use cases are covered below.

Linux Keyring Utility

The Linux Keyring Utility gets and sets secrets in a Linux Keyring using the D-Bus Secret Service.

It has been tested with GNOME Keyring and KDE Wallet Manager. It should work with any implementation of the D-Bus Secrets Service.

Interface

There are two packages, dbus_secrets and secret_collection. The secret_collection object uses the functions in dbus_secrets. It unifies the D-Bus Connection, Session and Collection Service objects to offer a simple get/set/delete interface that the CLI uses.

Usage - Importing it into your codebase

The Go Language API has offers Get(), Set() and Delete() methods. The first two accept and return string data.

Example (get)

package main

import (
    "os"
    sc "github.com/Keeper-Security/linux-keyring-utility/pkg/secret_collection"
)

func doit() {
    if collection, err := sc.DefaultCollection(); err == nil {
        if err := collection.Unlock(); err == nil {
            if secret, err := collection.Get("myapp", "mysecret"); err == nil {
                print(string(secret))
                os.Exit(0)
            }
        }
    }
    os.Exit(1)
}

The .DefaultCollection() returns whatever collection the default alias refers to. It will generate an error if the default alias is not set. It usually points to the login keyring. Most Linux Keyring interfaces allow the user to set it.

The .NamedCollection(string) method provides access to collections by name.

Example (set)

Set takes the data as a parameter and only returns an error or nil on success. It does not restrict the content or length of the secret data.

if err := collection.Set("myapp", "mysecret", "mysecretdata"); err == nil {
    // success
}

Usage - Binary Interface (CLI)

The Linux binary supports three subcommands:

1. get

2. set

3. del

Get and del require one parameter; name, which is the secret Label in D-Bus API terms.

Del accepts one or more secret labels and deletes all of them. If it generates an error it will stop.

Set also requires the data as a single string in the second parameter. For example, set foo bar baz will generate an error but set foo 'bar baz' will work. If the string is - then the string is read from standard input.

Base64 encoding

Get and set take a -b or --base64 flag that handles base64 automatically. If used, Set will encode the input before storing it and/or get will decode it before printing.

Note that calling get -b on a secret that is not base64 encoded secret will generate an error.

Examples

# set has no output
lkru set root_cred '{
    "username": "root"
    "password": "rand0m."
}'
# get prints (to stdout) whatever was set
lku get root_cred
{
    "username": "root"
    "password": "rand0m."
}
lkru set -b root_cred2 '{"username": "gollum", "password": "MyPrecious"}'
lkru get root_cred2
eyJ1c2VybmFtZSI6ICJnb2xsdW0iLCAicGFzc3dvcmQiOiAiTXlQcmVjaW91cyJ9
lkru get -b root_cred2
{"username": "gollum", "password": "MyPrecious"}
cat ./good_cred.json | lkru set -b root_cred3 -
lkru get root_cred3
ewogICJ1c2VybmFtZSI6ICJhZGFtIiwKICAicGFzc3dvcmQiOiAicGFzc3dvcmQxMjMuIgp9

Errors

Error output goes to stderr so adding 2>/dev/null to the end of a command will suppress it.

No keyring

The login collection does not exist because the keyring does not exist. KDE may create kdewallet instead of login like GNOME.

Unable to get secret 'test_cred': Unable to retrieve secret 'test_cred' for application 'lkru' from collection '/org/freedesktop/secrets/collection/login': Object does not exist at path “/org/freedesktop/secrets/collection/login”

No matching secret

A secret may not be returned even though a secret with the same label exists. If the secret was not created with lkru, it may not have the same attributes. Namely 'Agent', 'Application', and 'Id'.

Unable to get secret 'test_cred': Unable to retrieve secret 'test_cred' for application 'lkru' from collection '/org/freedesktop/secrets/aliases/default': org.freedesktop.Secret.Collection.SearchItems returned nothing

No D-Bus Session

There may not be a D-Bus Session to host the Secret Service. This happens when the user is not logged into the GUI.

Unable to get the default keyring: Unable to open a D-Bus session: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files

No D-Bus

The system may not host D-Bus. Several lightweight linux distributions ship without it by default.

Unable to get the default keyring: Unable to connect to the D-Bus Session Bus: exec: "dbus-launch": executable file not found in $PATH